I Am
by Psychedelica
Summary: I am Ryan Matthew Jamison. I am five years old, gap-toothed, enthused by biochemistry, and my daddy is starting the apocalypse. (Or, how R was destined to save the world.)


I am Ryan Matthew Jamison. I am five years old, gap-toothed, enthused by biochemistry at such a tender age (the by-product of my father's research). I watch as one of the simulations fails, as the dead-eyed man is led out of the chamber but the goat he was eating is _still alive_.

_("Still alive, Daddy!")_

I watch as it hammers itself (THUD) against the reinforced glass (THUD) and its blood and flesh and brains smear across the clear surface (THUD). I want to scream for Daddy but I can't. It's too fascinating. What's happening? This has never happened before, Daddy.

He appears beside me and looks appalled. This has never happened before.

_("What's happening, Daddy?")_

_("I don't know, Ry. Fuck, I have no idea.")_

* * *

I am Ryan Jamison. The glass pierces my soft seven-year-old skin and I feel my brother's blood on my face. I am one with the twisted wreck and all I can hear for months afterward is my sister wailing.

_("Amy? Amy, wake up. Amy . . ._

_Mom? Daddy? Brett? It hurts, Mommy. Please, Mommy. Wake up."_

* * *

I am Ryan. I am halfway to becoming an orphan.

Daddy shouldn't have shut down that experiment, because now his bosses are angry with him (really, really angry, but I still don't know why Mommy and Amy and Brett had to get hurt because of it? They weren't part of the research, so how come they had to die?). Daddy's bosses are angry but They won't let him off the project, because he's the only one who _really _knows how the serum and the nanabutts work.

_("Nanobots, Ry. If you're gonna say it, at least say it properly. And for fuck's sake, quit _looking_ at me like that.")_

* * *

I am R. Jamison, son of Dr K. Jamison and nobody else. I am nine years old and hiding in an air vent in the outskirts of D.C. I watch as my father's limbs are ripped from his torso by a man who once bought me a Hershey's bar. I am too young to know not to scream, so I do, and he sees me, and next thing I know I'm on the ground (still screaming like Amy screamed when she was being stabbed through the chest with the grill of that SUV. Brett was completely silent but I guess my little brother was braver than me) and he's going to bite me going to bite me going to bite

(He doesn't bite me.)

I stare at my father's colleague as he backs off. His eyes are dead but his actions are human. What is he? A mutation? The second coming of Frankenstein's monster? He's definitely an accident. Dad never meant for _this._

* * *

I am someone. I don't know who. I have seen too much bloodshed for names or locations to matter anymore. All I know is that I must get to an airport. That's what Dad always said: airport, airport, airport.

_("We're gonna_ _change the world, Ry. Me and you, yeah? But not everyone's gonna like that. Not everyone's gonna understand. And if they don't, if they get me, you've gotta get to that airport, okay? Get on the first plane out of the godforsaken shitstorm we're gonna stir up.")_

(Social services pick me up before I reach departures. I suppose it's a good thing because I had no idea where I was going or how I was going to climb onto a flight unaccompanied.)

* * *

I am Ryan "Bennett" (you're not fooling me). I am twelve years old, and small girls and their moms cross the street to avoid me. Whoops. I have gone through five shrinks and eight specialist doctors, and none of them can work out why I can't _talk_. I know why: because I _can_ talk. I just don't have much to say anymore.

On this particular morning, the cereal falls from my mouth at the emergency news report. My foster mom hits me with a newspaper and tells me to get a move on. She hasn't noticed the world is ending, even if I have.

_("Dad? Dad, it's happening. The shitstorm's happening. Dad, where are you?")_

* * *

I am Ryan. I am thirteen years old and a girl's head is ripped from her spinal cord across the street. I speak the first word since my father was shredded limb from limb in front of me _("Fuck!") _and duck behind a car. If I was younger, more vulnerable-looking, you would help me. But I'm a teenager now, on the streets of D.C. in the flaming scraps of planet Earth, and you don't give a shit.

Fuck you, too.

* * *

You don't deserve to know my name. I am eighteen if you ask. I'm actually fifteen, but tall, and my baby blue eyes have seen far too much for you to call me a 'child'. You're happy to serve me drinks and sell me a spliff or two so long as I don't tip off what's left of the police force.

I don't know where I am, but I'm going north, so don't _you dare_ try to stop me.

* * *

I am RJ, leader of La Résistance, Chicago. I am sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. You won't see me coming before I stick a knife in the base of your skull. It's the least I can do after starting all this spectacular fuckery.

The Windy City's skyline is destroyed, but I never saw it before so I don't have much to compare it to. I am transcribing my father's notes, all stored up in my memory. I can recall the serum he used, and the schematics of the nanobots too, but not how to deactivate the damn things. Fat lot of good I am.

* * *

I am RJ. I am nineteen. Or am I twenty? Shit, how old am I? Nobody remembers. I ask the date but all I get are shrugs. Is it June yet? Is it still May? I adopt that fucking gesture as my own (because doesn't that just sum up my existence? An uncertain bobbing of shoulders?) and set out for Seattle.

(A little over a year later, a girl will tell me to stop shrugging. I can't. Not after all this.)

* * *

I am nameless. I am too old, too young, and where I am doesn't matter anymore.

God, it hurts. Why won't you just kill me?

Don't just leave me here to die. I can't die, not yet. I have to finish it. I have to finish what we started . . .

_("Dad, I have to finish it . . .")_

* * *

I am Rrrr-?

I don't care much about my age or where I came from.

I am _hungry._

* * *

I am R. I can't remember my age, or where I came from . . . but I'm getting there.

_("Dad? . . ._

_. . . I finished it . . ._

_ . . . . . . And you know what else? . . ._

_ . . . . . . . . . Fuck you.")_


End file.
